Innovation Network Of Industrv-University-Research Institute Cooperation-Empirical Investigation Into Equipment Manufacturing Industry In The Yangtze River Economic Belt

Against the background of deepening economic globalization and knowledge economy, innovation has become the key factor driving economic growth and improving the core competitiveness. Regional innovation networks, which utilize internal and external resources, become the major measures to improve regional innovation capabilities. As a major industry to optimize the industrial structure, equipment manufacturing industry is important for China economy. Although the scale of Chinese equipment manufacturing industry ranks first in the world, it has several weaknesses, such as low entrepreneurship, poor innovation capabilities and low value-added products. Therefore, it is meaningful to comprehensively evaluate the general conditions and innovation networks of equipment manufacturing industry in China. This paper will use Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), the largest inland river economic belt in the world, as example.The innovation networks are built in several ways:The innovation cooperation for applied technology between different actors can be reflected by joint invention patent application; the cooperation for basic research can be reflected by joint scientific paper publication; and transformation of research achievements can be reflected by industrial alliance, which is a new industry-university-research (IUR) cooperation. Different from existing research which was mainly based on province level data, this paper focuses on city level where the innovation really takes place. Based on the database of invention patent, scientific paper and industrial alliance of equipment manufacturing industry of 110 cities in YREB, this paper quantitatively evaluates the innovation environment of YREB, the evolution of the innovation networks, and the interaction between innovation environment and innovation networks to understand the dynamics of innovation networks evolution.In order to reflect the characteristics of innovation networks in YREB comprehensively and systematically, the paper calculates the structure index of innovation networks such as size, density, centralization and central degree by UCINet and ArcGIS software. The author finds out that the internal relations of the equipment manufacturing industry innovation networks in YREB are not well developed. However, the innovation networks show a trend for scale expansion and interaction intensity increasing. The spatial agglomeration of the innovation networks is significant, with larger Shanghai region as the core area. Universities and large enterprises are main players, while small enterprises are located at the edge of the network. The external linkages of the innovation network are strong, mainly with Beijing and Guangzhou. Therefore, author argues that construction of the innovation network of the equipment manufacturing industry in the Yangtze River economic belt should be relied on governments, enterprises, universities, research statutes and other actors.